Stories: Italy

Stories connected to Italy.

• Pay for two coffees. Drink one.The Neapolitan caffè sospeso tradition leaves a prepaid coffee for someone who needs it later. The giver does…
• The defendant was a deceased pope.In Rome in 897, the corpse of Pope Formosus was put on trial in what became known as the Cadaver Synod, amid…
• A war named for a bucket. Not simply caused by one.The 1325 conflict between Bologna and Modena is remembered as the War of the Bucket. Long-running political r…
• Fried eggplant. Then chocolate.Along Italy's Amalfi Coast, a dessert layers fried eggplant with chocolate. Some versions add nuts or candied…
• A dog visited Pompeii almost every day.Argo started visiting the Pompeii ruins as a puppy and learned their opening hours. He was often first in and…
• Their coup failed. Even the family crests had to go.After a failed 1310 coup in Venice, leaders' houses were demolished. All members of the Tiepolo and Querini f…
• A doctor lost his books in a fire. His account was lost too.After a fire in Rome in AD 192 destroyed his books and medical tools, the physician Galen wrote about facing…
• Togo's first Winter Olympians trained elsewhere.Togo made its Winter Olympics debut in 2014 with two women athletes. The tropical country has no snow, and ne…
• Where should light hit a curved mirror? Leonardo tried a device.Alhazen's problem asks where light must strike a spherical mirror to travel between two points. The 11th-cent…
• Uncovered heads could seem rude. So priests wore a hat at Mass.In 17th-century China, missionaries adapted Catholic practice to local ideas of respect by using a ceremonial…
• A sample from Pompeii went to a scientist. It turned out to be glass, not stone.Eighteenth-century naturalist Johann Jacob Ferber supplied mosaic samples from Pompeii to researcher Torbern…
• The singer was performing in Italy. 'She' was also appearing in Germany.After Haiducii's cover of 'Dragostea din tei' became popular, impersonators lip-synced at several booked appe…
• The opera was a tragedy. His costume dropped twice.During a 1935 performance of Rigoletto at Boston Opera House, singer Ettore Verna's lower costume fell to his…
• Football stickers had failed to sell. He packed them four at a time.Italian entrepreneur Giuseppe Panini bought unsold football stickers in 1960 and began selling them in packs…
• Enemy ships approached, so Rome lashed its transports together.During the siege of Utica in today's Tunisia, Roman forces learned that a Carthaginian fleet was coming. They…
• Two opera stars shared a connection long before they shared a stage.Soprano Mirella Freni and tenor Luciano Pavarotti grew up in Modena, Italy, and had the same wet nurse. Years…
• The Finnish film brought part of its subject to its Rome premiere.For the 2024 Rome screening of 100 Litres of Gold, filmmakers shipped 20 litres of unfermented sahti to Italy…
• Donus II had a portrait and praise, but apparently never existed.A medieval papal list seems to have mistaken the title domnus for a person's name. Later writers gave the sup…
• We can read Cicero's courtroom defence, but not its certain outcome.In 54 BCE, Cicero defended Gnaeus Plancius in Rome. His speech Pro Plancio survives, yet historians cannot sa…
• A pope offered Sicily's throne to an English child who never went there.In 1254, the papacy offered the Kingdom of Sicily to ten-year-old Prince Edmund. His father Henry III accepte…
• The ammunition at this carnival is orangesAt the Carnival of Ivrea in northern Italy, organized teams throw oranges at one another. People on foot face…
• The ancient tear bottle probably held perfumeSmall vessels from ancient tombs were once interpreted as containers for mourners’ tears. The name lacrymator…
• Some surviving platform shoes exceed fifty centimetresChopines were elevated shoes worn during the Renaissance, with surviving examples more than fifty centimetres…
• Scopa takes its name from a broomItalian scopa is named for a broom. A played card captures a matching value, or a matching total when there i…
• Briscola gives a small numeral a high positionIn Italian briscola, played with a forty-card deck, the three ranks immediately below the ace and above the k…
• Tarantella varies across southern ItalyTarantella names a group of southern Italian folk dances rather than one uniform form. Regional names include…
• A jacquemart makes the clock’s action visibleA jacquemart is a mechanised wooden or metal figure that strikes a bell with a hammer. Often positioned on a…
• Barefoot gold, then gold with shoesAbebe Bikila won the 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome barefoot. Four years later in Tokyo, he wore shoes and won…
• From a leg brace to three Olympic goldsChildhood polio weakened Wilma Rudolph’s left leg. After treatment, she learned to walk without a brace by ab…
• A lamprey-like name for a cattle stomach dishFlorentine lampredotto uses cattle’s fourth stomach, the abomasum. It is also served in a bread roll as stree…
• The victory vase was too heavy for the galleryA marble urn originally intended for Napoleon passed to Britain after his defeat and was carved to celebrate…
• An encyclopedia in writing without encoded meaningLuigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, first published in 1981, presents an imaginary world in strange illustr…
• A nineteenth-century machine sent signatures over wiresCaselli’s pantelegraph was an early facsimile device for sending handwriting and drawings over telegraph line…
• Fido was present when his monument was unveiledFido became known in Italy for continuing to wait at a bus stop after his owner died during the war. In 1957,…
• Salt taxation became a rebellionIn 1540, Perugia rebelled against a papal salt tax that challenged its existing exemption. Salt mattered for…
• Venice’s symbolic marriageAt Venice’s Festa della Sensa, the mayor takes the historic role of the doge and throws a ring into the lagoo…
• A dressmaker built containers for studying sea lifeJeanne Villepreux-Power worked in sewing and embroidery in Paris, including a royal wedding gown. After movin…
• This slender-necked beetle has no eyes or flying wingsLeptodirus hochenwartii lives in caves in Slovenia, Croatia and parts of Italy. It has long legs and antennae…